Our Cottage
by stickthekettleon
Summary: Quiet reminiscence at Grimmauld Place. The first R/S I've written in a very long time, and I found it thoroughly enjoyable. I hope you will as well.


"It was all such a long time ago, wasn't it?" Remus asked, rolling onto his side to face Sirius as they lay in bed together, tangled in the twisted sheets. A bird swooped onto the roof outside their window and its early-morning chattering, followed swiftly by the dawn chorus, failed to disturb them.

"What was?" Sirius asked, staring at the canopy over their heads, one of his hands tucked under his pillow.

"Everything," Remus said quietly, resting his hand on top of Sirius's chest. "Hogwarts. Our cottage, do you remember it?"

Sirius smiled and nodded. "We had lace curtains, didn't we?"

"That's right," Remus said, grinning widely.

"And you were the perfect little housewife," Sirius added, laughing as he turned to face Remus as well, who was now blushing.

"I was not."

"Oh, I think you were. Didn't you bake? I remember sink fulls of washing up and those ridiculously heavy pots you insisted on using."

"Yes," Remus mumbled, fiddling with a loose thread from the sheet. "Yes, I used to bake you things. For when you got back. And those pots were my grandmother's, show them some respect."

Sirius rolled his eyes. "I thought you did. And didn't...didn't you used to sew?"

"I made rag dolls for the muggle hospice once," Remus said, turning even pinker.

"You," Sirius said, grinning and pressing a kiss to Remus's neck. "Are a big-" another kiss - "girl's-" another - "blouse."

"Oh, sod off," Remus muttered, trying to push Sirius away but smiling all the same.

Sirius cackled triumphantly and sat up, pinning Remus to the bed by his wrists. "You did. You used to sew, and you baked, and I remember you painting lovely little watercolour pictures on tiny little sheets of canvas - you painted the river and our cottage but you'd never paint me, would you? Oh no, you wouldn't paint me, but you used to like reading - plays were your favourite, I remember that now - and you played the piano, oh God, I remember - you played...you played...Good Day Sunshine! That's what you played, yes, that's it, and what else did you do? You never wrote, you thought you weren't good enough, but I think I remember you whispering things to me in bed at night that sounded like bloody poetry to me, and you took photographs and you baked the _muggle_ way, didn't you?"

Remus grinned as Sirius recounted his rush of memories and nodded, kissing his lips gently. "That's right," he said. "That's right, love."

Laughing softly, Sirius fell onto his back again and continued to beam at the canopy. "You picked dainty little flowers from the garden and put them in tiny vases all over the house."

"We used to smoke on the back step," Remus put in.

"And we had hot and raucous sex in the garden shed, remember?"

"I remember," Remus said. "You'd been tinkering with that bloody bike and I'd brought you some tea. It started to rain. You didn't want to go back into the house because you'd get your hair wet."

Sirius burst out laughing. "Yeah. Yeah, that's right. That was a good evening, that was. And we went down to the chip shop after and sat by the river with that massive bag of chips wrapped in newspaper. All the print got on our hands."

"We had a bath together, after that. It was summer and we had the window open. That moth came in and scared you silly, didn't it?"

Sirius laughed and nodded enthusiastically. "Bloody thing."

"You built that swing for when Harry grew up."

"Yeah," Sirius said, his face falling a little. "We engraved the bottom of it, didn't we?"

"Mmm-hmm," Remus said, biting his lip. "Remember the little village? It was the next one over from ours. Llangoedmor, I think it was called."

"That one with the record shop?"

"I think you bought their entire stock of badges during that couple of years, you know."

"I used to...I used to wear them on that leather jacket of mine, didn't I? Is that right?"

Remus nodded and grinned. "And you put a gay pride flag - that one we got given when we went to that pub in London, remember? You put it on the windowsill facing the street, anyone could have seen it. It's a wonder the place didn't get torched."

"It did," Sirius said, frowning.

Remus fell silent and rested his head on Sirius's chest. "Not for that," he whispered, linking their fingers together.

"No," Sirius said, stiffening. "It was because people thought that I was a fucking--"

"Shhh," Remus soothed, stroking Sirius's cheek. "Shhh."

Sirius went quiet, and after a minute, the tension left his body and he pulled Remus close to him, tangling a hand in his hair. "I love you," he whispered, kissing Remus's forehead.

"I love you too," Remus replied, tucking his face into Sirius's neck and closing his eyes. "God, I love you too."


End file.
